What is Deb up to?

We had a different bus driver that picked us up from Kalbarri – Big Al. He picked us up at 6.30am . Al is very different to Enzo, tall and softly spoken but has the same passion for the landscape. He used to be a teacher. He took us to Kalbarri national park and down into a gorge where we went swimming. It was really peaceful – I pretended I lived in the gorge.

The rocks were awe-inspiring. i met some good people on my bus too, they were all people travelling alone. Lindsay (from Hertfordshire and has just spent 8 months in Central and South America, I learnt a lot of useful and useless things from her), James (an ex-policeman kiteboarder from Bournemouth), Phil (50-something from NZ, just sold his business to go travelling), Robin from London (who sold his house and super-bike because he’d realised money doesn’t make you happy) and Ola (a 21year old professional poker player from Sweden).

We stayed just one night in Denham, then went to Monkey Mia to see dolphins being fed.
Back on the road again, we stopped off at Shell beach which is made of thousands of tiny white shells, apparently 10m deep. It was quite eery because it was deserted and kind of ‘shone’ in a strange way:

Met some local people who said we were mad to go up to Broome because it would be so hot. I began to feel a bit anxious about it.
Back on the road we saw emus, termite mounds, wild goats, salt heaps.

Stayed at Coral Bay for three nights, one of my favourite places so far. It is tiny with just a few shops and a caravan park. The beach is beautiful and if you walk along far enough you can find loads of baby sharks, just basking in the shallow warm water. You can stand among them but they are quite timid. There were over 40 of them when I went there.

That was the night I first really saw the stars clearly, it was amazing. Met some german mechanical engineering students who will be travelling to NZ on the same plane as me. They want to get a camper van when they get there so maybe I will join them.
When we got back to the hostel the kitchen was locked and the ex-policeman was hungry so he broke in – Indiana Jones style and grabbed some biscuits.

Heading back from the beach one day we saw a group of people gutting fish. We wandered over and Lindsay worked her charm on a couple of boys and managed to get a big bag of fish for free. We barbecued it that ngiht – so good to have real food instead of noodles, pasta, rice….

02/12/05 On the way to Exmouth we stopped for snorkelling at turquiose bay. ANOTHER revoltingly beautiful, almost deserted beach…

Look how unhappy I am…
Went out for dinner at the local pub and met a guy from Broome, he was a fisherman who was moving his boat down to Perth for the cyclone season. He again said I was mad to go to Broome this time of year. He was really friends, crinkly, twinkly man. I said he must have quite a nice life and he crinkled up his face and said ‘oh yeah chick, I got a great life!’
I really like the way people just wander over and start chatting. And i really really like that the guys shake your hand and ask who you are and how you are and look at your face rather than ‘look you up and down’ like some guys back home do.
Theres no ‘ladies first’ type of attitude here but I think that is a good thing, because there is a feeling of more equality.

That night we stayed in Tom Price, a mining town. We stayed in ‘dongas’ (above), basically human refrigerators. The campsite was in the shadow of Mount Nameless.

I sat on the pavement in Tom Price waiting for the bus driver, it was too hot to sit down. The red iron earth here emits heat. We are pretty much ‘outback’ now and I love it! The trees smell like eucalyptus.

04/12/05
We went to Karijini today, a national park 3 times the size of Belgium. We went to an aboriginal sacred site ‘rainbow serpent dreaming’. WE walked down into the gorge, it felt really prehistoric, with giant ferns and paper-bark trees. Waterfalls and dragon flies. We swam in the pools. I pretended I was a cave woman.

We drove past a town called Wittenoom, population: 9. It used to be an astbestos mining town and the government wants everyone to leave. They have cut of the power now but these last 9 people refuse to leave. Good luck to them.
I saw my first willy-willy (miniature cyclone) on the horizon. It looked very dramatic – a column of red dust against the blue sky.

We stayed in Port Headland. Not a nice place. High security, barbed wire fences. I think the ‘threat’ was from the locals. I don’t know yet why it was like ths in Port Headland and not in other places. No one seemed to want to talk about it.

Stopped off at 80-mile beach. It was beautiful. So so hot, we were there for just 1 hour but that was enough. It doesn’t make any difference if you are in the shade or not, it is just HOT all the time, everywhere.

05/12/05
Arrived in Broome, what an amazing place. I can’t really describe exactly why, it isn’t particularly pretty or anything. Maybe it’s because there are a lot of locals here but they are part of the community. That evening we went to a karaoke night, mostly locals there.
Aswell as meeting the locals, I met a man from Syndey who comes up to Broome to spend time at the settlements. It was interesting because he knew a lot about how things are for them, what they need and what they want. He decided it would be funny to put my name down for a karaoke song. Having run away the first time (and leaving the rest of my bus-friends to sing ‘my’ song) I was eventually forced into singing Cher – ‘If i could turn back time’. Any one who knows me at all will know this was a nightmare come true for me. Bizarrely though, i did enjoy it – it was fun to see the locals dancing to my dreadful singing and it felt good to face another one of my fears.

Spent the next 2 days by the pool or (very slowly) walking around town. The following night we went to a different pub and met some guy who’s teeth fell out when he smiled for a photo. Beautiful. We saw Andrew again who’s friend had delivered his own child at one of the settlements. We saw a photo of the baby, they were trying to think of a name. I’d like to know what they decided on.

It was really hard to leave Broome and not just mentally, walking around with a backpack in 40 degrees is not a good idea…

Tags: Debbie Lambert, Travel, western australia

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